Ref Rap: EBSCOhost Databases Part 1

In March I attended EBSCOhost Database Training at the State Library. EBSCOhost contains some great databases covering a ridiculously wide range of topics (I recently found articles on the history of roller coasters – in my opinion a very relevant and important subject that just isn’t studied enough)! We specifically looked at three databases within EBSCOhost:

• Australian / NZ Reference Centre
  This includes coverage of SMH and the ‘Daily Telegraph’ as well as magazines such as ‘Woman’s Day’, ‘Ralph’ and ‘Sports Illustrated’ (minus the images!). There are also a number of international publications such as ‘Time’ and ‘Shakespeare Studies’ (good for students forced to study this complicated topic). So next time someone asks for a magazine we don’t have in print, you don't need to necessarily turn them away empty handed. Check out the list of publications in this database to see if it’s available.
• MasterFILE Premier
  This database contains many International Journals plus treaties, speeches and political transcripts. There are a number of excellent resources for students including biographies, images, maps, flags and country profiles. It includes publications such as ‘New Scientist’, ‘National Geographic’ and the ‘Economist’.
• Science Reference Center
  Hands up if you can spot the American Spelling! Many databases and publications within EBSCOhost are from the US and I found that many of my search results reflected this. Nevertheless, this database has some great publications for those pesky school assignments including ‘Science and Children’, ‘Science Activities’ and ‘Science News for Kids’. Have you ever had a student looking for science experiments? You can find them here. You can also restrict search results within this database to those suitable for students in Years 5 – 8 or Years 9 – 12.

There are another three databases that we didn’t look at:

• GreenFILE
  This covers everything green – think Climate Change, alternative energy and big cat conservation. Unfortunately, the majority of the database consists of abstracts and citations rather than full text however, if a Patron really wants an article that’s not available, they could always request it through document delivery.
• Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts
  the name says it all. It covers lots of library and information science journals and contains lots of abstracts. Once again, article request is a possibility.
• Literacy Reference Center
  This contains information about many popular authors as well as the full text of various stories and books eg. I found the story ‘The Canterville Ghost’ in HTML format. I also found critical literature on Chaucer and ‘The Canterbury Tales’ – the painful text I had to study as an HSC student!

So have a look at EBSCOhost. Check out all those scholarly databases, or catch up on all the gossip in ‘Woman’s Day’. See what you can find that interests you and even comment on it here!

In Part 2, I’ll talk about the interesting EBSCOhost search features and applications.

Karen B.